


The Most Beautiful People

by noblewriting



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Disney - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Magical Accidents, Multi, References to Shakespeare, Romantic Comedy, Romantic Fluff, bisexual!belle, general silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblewriting/pseuds/noblewriting
Summary: "can i please have a crack-shippy fic where everybody is in love with the wrong people." YES, tumblr person, you may have this fic and all my money besides. Fantastic prompt.





	The Most Beautiful People

Lumiere’s legs ache, but it’s a fantastic ache—the ache of being out in summer, hiking through the woods, air on his face when for just a second there he thought he’d never have a face again. He breathes, deeply, almost too deeply—and oh, his muscles hurt.

“You might have thought not to wear heels,” teases Plumette, gently, just behind him.

“Cherie, you yourself are wearing heels,” says Lumiere. She laughs and raises her skirts so he can see them. Truly scandalous! And oh so pretty. Their laughter can be heard through the forest as he chases her off the path.

Behind them by a few yards, Cogsworth sighs and raises his eyes to the heavens. Lovers in summer, eh? He cannot remember ever having been this way himself: annoying, grasping for physical attention, all flirt and kiss and nonsense, utter nonsense. He groans and puffs and leans against a tree.

“They all do it, Mr. Cogsworth,” says Mrs. Potts, walking just behind him. “Let them have their fun. Summer was made for lovers such as them.”

“And normal people such as us?” says Cogsworth. “What of us? You have Mr. Potts, I have…..hmph, I have Clothilde. Summer should belong to us, too.”

Mrs. Potts smiles. Far down the path—lagging far behind the older members of the party—Cadenza and Garderobe cling to each other, arm in arm, taking their time and hiking only in between the kisses and hugs. Cogsworth groans again and keeps on walking.

“ _Mon ami!_ Cogsworth! Down here!”

The party follow the sound of Lumiere’s voice, off the beaten trail and down into a hollow. Cogsworth waves as he sees his friends practically dancing in front of a fallen tree.

“Don’t you see?” yells Plumette. “It’s a tree-house! Someone has made a home beneath the tree!”

It’s true: the upturned roots of the tree form the roof of a home, a charming one strewed with blankets and baskets of herbs. Just outside the shelter stands a cauldron, bubbling over flame; this last intrigues Lumiere very much, who stands over it with a spoon.

“You must come try this at once,” he insists. “Marjoram! I haven’t tasted it in years. Ooh, and something else as well—” He sips from the cauldron and concentrates. Plumette, beside him, laughs and eats as well.

“Lumiere! We are trespassing, we cannot just help ourselves to someone’s dinner—”

“Relax, mon ami,” and Lumiere cuts Cogsworth off by forcing a spoonful to his lips. “When our enchanting host returns, we will share our picnic with him. The master will be along with it shortly, no? Cadenza—you are a man of taste—taste marjoram and see what you think.”

While the musicians smile and sup, Mrs. Potts feels an ache deep within her. This is no muscle spasm—though she certainly had enough of those while hiking this deep into the woods—no, this is unease. She looks into the hovel of the tree, and sees roses pinned against the roots, and an owl perched upon a chair; _magic_ , she thinks, _magic_ , and her stomach turns over.

“I had no idea!” Adam and Belle have found the rest of the party; Mrs. Potts turns and hurries toward her prince, who is wrestling with a large picnic basket. “I’ve never been this far into the woods. Who do you think lives here?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Belle’s eyebrows raise. She’s intrigued by this hidden house in the wood, made from roots and bound with roses. “I figured you knew everything about your estate.”

“Darling, the only thing I know about the estate is that I love it and you. What’s that you’re eating, Lumiere?”

“Marjoram! And hearts-ease, I think. Most unusual. Never tasted it in a soup before—master, try it, truly _délicieux_ —”

Adam eats while Belle looks at the hovel. Her eyes flit over it, turning it upside down, calculating out which story-book she knows it from.

 _This place is known to me,_ she thinks. _I’ve never been here before, and neither has Adam—but I know it, I know it._ Behind her, Mrs. Potts copies Adam and eats from the cauldron, a worried look on her face.

 _Roses—and herbs—and a tree in the woods—_ “Hold on,” calls Belle, “my father told me about this. Isn’t this where the Enchantress lives?”

Silence from her friends. And then a _BANG_.

Belle whips around in time to see the cauldron belching yellow smoke. There is a hiss of scent—herbs and magic and magic and herbs—and seven bodies hit the ground.

* * *

 

There. It had taken her a while, but Belle had managed. The first thing she had done was to get them away from the hovel; a little ways away now, they lay in a glen, the bodies of Adam and the staff pulled where she could get them. No one dead, thank goodness; but all unconscious, and— _phew_ , thinks Belle—heavier than she would have guessed.

She takes a moment to admire her handiwork. Plumette, Cadenza, and Mrs. Potts all are safely stowed beneath a weeping willow, their heads supported by roots and veiled with branches. Madame de Garderobe she has managed to pull beside a log. Lumiere and Cogsworth—heavy, you’d think they were still made of metal—she couldn’t get very far, so they lay just beyond, side by side, not far from where they fell. Adam she props onto a stump beside her— _and I cannot wait,_ thinks Belle, t _o tease him for the number of times I’ve carried his body through this wood._

It was disturbing to have them all unconscious, though. Oh well; she’d done capably—I always do capably, thinks Belle—and now she just had to wait for them to wake up. Adam moans beside her, and Belle smiles and nudges him.

“Come on, wake up, Adam,” she says. “I know you’re strong enough to.”

He moans again. _Sissy_ , thinks Belle, _he’s going to pretend he can’t so I’ll help him._ Just to tease, she escapes his groggy reach and saunters off toward the willow. _He’ll follow me in a second, and then he can help me, and then we can decide what to do with Cadenza and—_

Oh.

When Belle propped the staff up against the willow moments ago, Plumette, Cadenza, and Mrs. Potts had all been quite unconscious. Not so now. Plumette still slept, but—and here Belle’s mind flipped over in her head—Cadenza and Mrs. Potts were up and snogging. “

Uhh—pardon me?” Cadenza’s hands are locked onto Mrs. Potts’ face; that good lady’s arms are thrown across his shoulders in the most casual, intimate way imaginable. There is definitely some tongue happening. Belle’s mind does a cartwheel and tries to find its bearings.

“Uh—Mrs. Potts? Maestro?” _All right, all right, maybe they were having an affair all this time, somehow, that they kept concealed from everybody, including their spouses…spouses who they are both utterly devoted to and would never, ever stray from, yes, definitely, good going, Belle._ “What are you doing?”

“Just a little tea and music,” coos Maestro Cadenza. Mrs. Potts giggles—giggles—and lodges her foot halfway up Cadenza’s thigh. Belle’s ears burn and her eyes wish they could fall out of her head.

“Okay,” says Belle. “Okay. I am too clever for this. Did you—are you—I mean of course it’s none of my business but—”

“Darling,” say Adam, just behind her, and Belle breathes and whips around to see her love coming through the bower of the weeping willow branches.

“Adam! Thank goodness you’re here, I—” But his eyes aren’t looking at her, and he is walking right past her, and he is kneeling beside the slowly waking Plumette.

 _Okay. Okay then. He is just concerned about the maid._ That is good and kind and very Adam-like. Belle follows him.

“ _Mon amour_ ,” breathes Plumette, staring up at Adam.

“Oh, no, sorry, you’ve got the wrong tall, overdressed white man,” says Belle. “Lumiere will be along in just a moment, I’m sure—”

“I have never beheld anything so beautiful as you,” says Adam, staring at Plumette’s face. “How could I have lived and not seen you?”

“ _Mon amour_ ,” says Plumette again, and uses Adam’s cravat to yank his lips to hers.

Oooookay. Belle needs to take a break. She exits the willow—Mrs. Potts’ giggle of “tea for two!” unfortunately not escaping her burning ears—and stands outside to take stock.

 _Adam,_ she thinks, _would never, ever do this. Not my Adam, not ever,_ and slowly Belle’s faith picks itself back up and pushes her brain back to working. _Mrs. Potts, Cadenza—they would never do that, either. And neither would Plumette._ Magic, then: magic, clearly, to cause this madness.

She glances at the log where Garderobe is—thank goodness, she remain asleep. She glances at the meadow where she left Lumiere and Cogsworth. It sits empty.

She tracks their heavy footprints to the bank of a brook. The meadow dips down and she cannot see them, but she knows that they are there, together and alone.

 _Fearless_ , she thinks. _Be fearless._ And walks down to the bank. 

"You old fool!” flusters Cogsworth, yelling at Lumiere. “Poppycock, utter poppycock! Balderdash.”

“You jester,” says Lumiere, “all talk and no action, as usual.”

“Lumiere? Cogsworth? Everything all right? Nothing….different?”

“Same old madness,” grumbles Cogsworth. “This idiot thinks he can beat me in a competition!”

“ _Mon beau_ ,” says Lumiere, “you know how competitive i get when the stakes are high.”

 _Thank goodness, they’re just the same._ Belle breathes in, out. In, out.

“You’re not winning any kissing contest,” says Cogsworth, “not on my watch.”

“You are playing with so much fire,” hisses Lumiere, and dives into a kiss.

Out, out, out, out. Belle cannot catch breath. The kiss keeps going.

_Okay, Belle, you’re clever. Come on._

“Gentlemen, uh? I can see you’re into this, but could we do this some other time?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘we,’ you’re not invited,” says Cogsworth. “It’s just us.”

Lumiere, Belle sees, is the master of multitasking: he is somehow taking off Cogsworth’s coat for him while maintaining an exquisite French kiss. Incredible.

“Ok, fine, keep—keep doing that,” and Belle’s mind flinches back to the sight of Adam returning Plumette’s kisses but _no, no_ , “just—um—I think there might have been something in what you ate. Lumiere, what were you saying was in that cauldron?”

Even in the most ecstatic passion Lumiere has a soft spot for food. “Hearts-ease,” he says, his teeth half buried in Cogsworth’s cravat. “Most unusual. Never seen hearts-ease in cooking before—”

Cogsworth is still a walking textbook even as he takes Lumiere’s shirt off. “Mostly used for medicinal purposes, not culinary. ‘Meh’ taste. Related to the pansy—”

“Pansy? Those are in one of Adam’s favorite plays— _Hamlet_ ,” says Belle. “‘There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts.’ Ophelia says it.”

Cogsworth does not respond. He is sidetracked by something distracting Lumiere is doing at his neck.

“Everyone is having such strange thoughts,” says Belle, “Cadenza with Mrs. Potts, Plumette kissing my Adam. All these strange thoughts, if only I could more of them—oh! _SHAKESPEARE!”_

“What on earth is she on about,” mumbles Cogsworth.

“If I follow her chain of thought, _mon petit choux,_ I believe Cadenza is kissing Beatrice, the Master is kissing Plumette, and Belle wishes to be kissing Monsieur Shakespeare.”

“That does not explain why you are not currently kissing me.”

“Good point. At this rate, I am fit to lose the contest,” and Lumiere turns back to kissing.

Belle is talking out loud now. “Of course! It’s in a _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Shakespeare calls it ‘love-in-idleness’ there, but it’s the same flower, the same pansy! And in the play, it makes people fall in love with whoever they see first!”

“Do you remember what the first thing I saw once I turned human was?” murmurs Cogsworth.

“Me, obviously. It’s always me. Amazing foreshadowing,” and Lumiere rolls back on top of the major domo.

“So if there was hearts-ease in that cauldron, when it blew up in everyone’s faces, everyone near it was affected. And then I laid Cadenza by Mrs. Potts—and Adam would have seen me but he saw Plumette first—and then I laid you two blunderers aside over here—”

“ _Brava! Brava!_ Brilliant reasoning,” says a beautiful voice just behind her, and Belle turns to see Madame de Garderobe, looking straight at her.

“Madame,” gulps Belle, and then it’s too late and she’s being swallowed by a kiss.

Garderobe’s perfume is intoxicating, and Belle lingers for a moment. Wowza. Hot damn. If she can kiss like this all the time, Cadenza is a lucky man. Wait a minute—

Belle pulls away, trips over the men, regains her balance, gasping. “You have a husband.”

“We do not take monogamy so seriously in Italy,” says Garderobe.

 _This is insane_. “Yes! Just, um,” Belle skirts the embrace, “I need to gather some flowers.”

“ _Un mazzolino di fiori?_ For me? _Cara_ , you are so sweet to think of me so!”

“…right. Why don’t I go get some roses this way, and you go get some for me that way?”

“It breaks my heart to leave you,” says Madame de Garderobe, and for a minute Belle can see why the courts of Europe threw diamonds and gems at this woman’s feet. But Garderobe turns away, and sets to picking flowers, and Belle sprints back to the Enchantress’s hovel.

Her hands fly through the bundles of roses and marjoram. Surely what she needs is in here somewhere. Please, oh please, let it not all have been in the cauldron—

Agathe places small white blooms into Belle’s hands. She has been so used to romance for the last hour that it takes her a moment to see that Agathe is not here to swear eternal devotion or fall at her feet or pull out her hair. Once this sinks in:

“What the _hell_ are you doing with this stuff?”

“It’s for another story, later on,” says Agathe. “I did not think to see your party coming so close.”

“Oh, trust me, it’s moved way beyond close and definitely into intimate,” says Belle.

“I will help them sleep,” says Agathe.

“Darn it,” says Belle, “I was really looking forward to knocking them all out with a saucepan.”

“Leave that for the hero of another story,” says the Enchantress, and waves her hands.

Belle lugs each person back to the glen, and takes out the small white blooms of hearts-ease to brush on each person’s eyes. _I’ve always wanted to play Puck_ , she thinks, as she puts Plumette beside Lumiere, their faces almost touching. S _hakespeare would be proud, I’m solving this just as he did_. She fetches out the portrait of Mr. Potts from Mrs. Potts’ handbag, and sets it just before her face, so it will be the first thing she sees as she wakes with the hearts-ease on her eyes. The musicians she tucks together beneath the willow, and Cogsworth she leaves by himself, throwing water on his face and hoping the Enchantress will cover the rest. Adam’s head she gently, gently, rests in her lap. All is quiet as they sleep.

“If we shadows have offended,” says Belle, and she thinks of lovers in midsummer, lovers in the forest and lovers in her dreams, and she strokes Adam’s hair and speaks from memory.

_“If we shadows have offended,_

_Think but this, and all is mended,_

_That you have but slumber’d here_

_While these visions did appear._

_And this weak and idle theme,_

_No more yielding but a dream…._

_Give me your hands, if we be friends—”_

"I hope we are a good deal more than friends,” says Adam, from her lap, and his blue eyes are bright upon her face. “And I hope that’s not _Midsummer_ you’re reciting from. You know I hate how unrealistic it is.”

“Says the man whose favorite play is about a Danish king terrified of live theatre,” says Belle.

“Says the woman who read it aloud and emphasized all the good parts,” says Adam, and reaches up to kiss her.

Around the glen, the others wake up. Garderobe and Cadenza kiss and touch, no memory remaining of the last hour of their lives; Mrs. Potts stretches, tsk-tsking at the grass stains on her dress. Lumiere and Plumette appear from around a tree, laughing, each orbiting the other, catching kisses. Cogsworth asks if anybody has seen his coat.

 _And I,_ thought Belle, _restore amends._

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't think of a graceful way to add this into the fic itself, so this is the epilogue.
> 
> He doesn't quite forget. As he wanders back down the mountain, full of picnic and anecdotes, Cogsworth feels like he is missing something. They had found his coat near a creek bed—though how it had gotten there he hadn't the slightest idea—but no, it's not something physical he's missing; it's—it's something else, something else entirely. Behind him, Plumette and Lumiere laugh and embrace.
> 
> "Lovers in summer," says Mrs. Potts. "Are you still so disapproving, Mr. Cogsworth?"
> 
> "I don't think I ever disapproved entirely," says Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts raises one eyebrow and rolls her eyes and goes back to ask Plumette about something. Cogsworth walks on, alone, trying to pinpoint the shape of the thing he misses.
> 
> "So alone, mon ami?" says Lumiere, the lanky shape appearing beside him with a genial smile. "You should walk with Plumette and me, we should keep you company."
> 
> "What, and stand by while you kiss and prattle and....." He can't keep it up. For some reason, his general disapproval of romance has diminished over the span of this hike. "Oh, I don't know," he grumbles. "Go back to Plumette, the two of you are an exquisite pair."
> 
> "There's always room for a third," says Lumiere, and Cogsworth looks at him so suddenly he almost loses his balance. Lumiere shrugs and smiles and opens his hands, palms up and flat, to his friend. "You will call me a dreamer, but some summer dreams don't entirely fade, mon ami."
> 
> "Don't they?"
> 
> Lumiere is offended. "What, do you wish they did? Was I terrible as all that?"
> 
> "Well, not nearly as good as I was, at least."
> 
> "Pardonez-moi?" Lumiere cries. "That is a lie of a dream! How dare you—"
> 
> "Lout!"
> 
> "Crab-apple!"
> 
> They argue over the dream the entire way through the midsummer woods, and Agathe, back in her hovel, can't keep a small grin from her face.


End file.
